I would like to invite comment on a proposed House Rule. The rule has been proposed after a game in which the British and German forces built over 400 IPCs worth of naval units in Yugoslav and Egyptian Industrial Complexes including 5 Aircraft Carriers and 8 Battleships. The proposed rule is as follows:

1: Capital ships may only be placed at Major Industrial Complexes.

The proposed rule seeks to better balance the required abstraction of a casual war game, such as Axis and Allies, with the authentic recreation of war material production.

This rule is specifically targeting German, British, and ANZAC construction of Aircraft Carriers and Battleships at their captured, hastily built, or extremely new, respectively, Minor Industrial Complexes. The two most expensive and sizable ships in the war were not easy to reliably manufacture which is reflected in the relatively few shipyards which produced them in reality.

We don’t play tournament rules and use Alpha +3. We already have 1 House Rule in place using the Researcher rule from the 50th Anniversary edition.

I would appreciate your considered feedback.

Have to agree that this isn’t a smart play, you’re not capping out your existing industrial capacity, adding more is a loss of throughput.

For unintended concequences it would be hilarious if the Germans take it early and then, while they’re pushing Moscow, lose it to the Brits. However, when your strategy depends on your opponent being an idiot, you don’t have a strategy, you have a dream.

@andrewaagamer 1-2, you killed him and got permanent $5 bonus, 3-5 you failed nothing happens, 6 you failed and you have to remove 2 German Infantry and 2 German Armor.

@squirecam timing was everything. You could maximize your income by trying turn one but you also had to get Poland and France turn 1 so losing a 1/4 of your army would be problematic. You also had to make the attempt during the purchase units phase of the turn.

If it helps, remember this is an extremely abstracted war game. It doesn’t make any less sense that an army taking the same amount of time to travel from Paris to Berlin as Calcutta to Kunming or New York to San Francisco.

However, to everyone confident that this is completely fine and will never change, remember that Wall 'o Transports was canon for 2 decades before that garbage was finally addressed.

There is a question in the Q&A that approaches this but didn’t quite address my question. If US attacks SZ6 defended by 2 Destroyers and 1 Sub with 1 Destroyer, 4 planes (of any description) and 1 transport to amphibious, obviously they cannot ignore the subs because there are surface warships present. My question is that if kamikaze attacks succeed on the US destroyer,

1. As the rules state “the ship will not participate in the subsequent battle” have the planes lost the ability to hit the sub?
2. As this battle cannot be canceled at this point, does the sub get to roll in the first combat round since there is a transport present in the sea zone even if it can’t hit the attacking planes?

Thanks!

@taamvan Thank you for your response as it beautifully sums up the disconnect surrounding this issue. While I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, the arguments that I have advanced here and elsewhere, as well as many of the arguments I have seen over the years pertaining to the overly simplified retreat rule are not based in any way on their reasonableness or their lack thereof from a game balance perspective.

Axis & Allies is a re-creation of an event from our very recent history. It’s not Dune, it’s not Root, it’s not Twilight Imperium. It’s not just another board game that simply needs to be fun, interesting, and deep. Its appeal is that it is simultaneously extremely accessible and attempts to remain true to the spirit of accurately depicting the realities of the Second World War.

Ultimately, over the past 43 years, the game has changed multiple times resulting in a consistent increase of complexity while still remaining one of the most accessible wargames you’ll find. This is a damned challenging tightrope to walk and Larry Harris indeed deserves our gratitude and recognition.

This does not mean, however, that we are not to point out rules that need changing. From the perspective of a game designer one of the most reliable indications that a rule needs to be altered, changed, or tweaked is when it creates extremely non-intuitive gameplay and motivations. In an historical game it also needs to be considered if it is creating clearly anti-historical gameplay situations.

Yes, there are other facets of the game that would certainly fall under these umbrellas, and yes, this is a rule that has been part of the game for years and is a part of making the game relatively simple. But if we can keep track of the movement remaining on planes coming from 6 different territories to the same battle, we can keep track of which units came from which land territories.

@taamvan At least I now understand our fundamental difference. To me, original should be a concise 1 day game, Revised maybe 1 day. Global '40 should be a multi-week 20-30 hour game with its early starting position and rich ruleset regarding individual powers, national advantages, and neutral countries.

I personally prefer Columbus in June but I do hope you enjoy Atlanta.

@superbattleshipyamato when 2 armies approach an opponent from opposite directions, engage in battle, and then retreat, the opponent does not open his lines to allow one army to join the other in retreating in one direction

@arthur-bomber-harris The game is improved by people providing constructive criticism, as it was when transports were made defenseless, battleships stopped by sunk by the same amount of damage as a submarine or destroyer, and addressing the vast distances of Siberia and China dwarf those of Europe.

As I’m not addressing any kind of house rule, simply the flawed logic behind the existing rule in the game, this would seem to be the correct place to discuss it by default. Unfortunately, there is no separate “review” section of the forums to have this discussion.

I know this is errata’d somewhere but for the life if me I can’t track it down. If UK gets War Bonds, us it 1 die split between the 2 economies however UK wishes or is it 1 die for Europe & 1 die for Pac?

@panther to clarify, landing the plane there would not take control of the territory, that would require NCM a ground unit?

@panther thanks Panther! It seemed unintentional but given the comically immense amount of coast Sea Zone 10 covers I couldn’t rule out part of Mexico touching 11.

I can’t tell if the sliver of Mexico shown on the edge of the map is intentional.

Does Sea Zone 11 border part of Mexico?

@taamvan you didn’t follow my logic at all, as your proposal completely ignores the game design tradeoffs that have continued to emphasize generally generic units to keep the game at very much an entry level, and simultaneously ignores my statements regarding units on carriers still being completely independent, in favor of a point I never raised regarding the specialization of CAGs.

@andrewaagamer yes, but, Axis & Allies is a strategy World War 2 board game. Any nuance and complexity should exist within the framework of historical reality.

The fact of the matter is that most of the game’s design decisions represent a trade-off between two mutually exclusive extremes. On the one hand, we have absolute historical fidelity (guess who wins) and on the other we have pure game design in which any change to improve play can be made.

While I agree with you that there is nothing game breaking about other nation’s fighters taking up carrier spaces, it is still a jarring disconnect from an historical fidelity standpoint. If the ANZAC fighters have been assigned to a US carrier why aren’t they taking orders from the US Admiralty and participating in US maneuvers? Why is Soviet Russia’s penalty for having 8 British fighters sitting on Moscow from turn 4 onward only the loss of a $5 bonus?

Certainly this is not the place for specific House Rules discussions, but it is important we remain conscious of the reality that thousands of people play this game, and that many of them disagree with us on everything, other than how awesome this game is.

@superbattleshipyamato there was a time in the 90s when people were buying nothing U1 and 14 dice U2. It made some extremely frustrating games (although the times when they got 0 sixes out of 14 dice were hilarious)

@taamvan At least I now understand our fundamental difference. To me, original should be a concise 1 day game, Revised maybe 1 day. Global '40 should be a multi-week 20-30 hour game with its early starting position and rich ruleset regarding individual powers, national advantages, and neutral countries.

I personally prefer Columbus in June but I do hope you enjoy Atlanta.

@taamvan Thank you for your response as it beautifully sums up the disconnect surrounding this issue. While I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, the arguments that I have advanced here and elsewhere, as well as many of the arguments I have seen over the years pertaining to the overly simplified retreat rule are not based in any way on their reasonableness or their lack thereof from a game balance perspective.

Axis & Allies is a re-creation of an event from our very recent history. It’s not Dune, it’s not Root, it’s not Twilight Imperium. It’s not just another board game that simply needs to be fun, interesting, and deep. Its appeal is that it is simultaneously extremely accessible and attempts to remain true to the spirit of accurately depicting the realities of the Second World War.

Ultimately, over the past 43 years, the game has changed multiple times resulting in a consistent increase of complexity while still remaining one of the most accessible wargames you’ll find. This is a damned challenging tightrope to walk and Larry Harris indeed deserves our gratitude and recognition.

This does not mean, however, that we are not to point out rules that need changing. From the perspective of a game designer one of the most reliable indications that a rule needs to be altered, changed, or tweaked is when it creates extremely non-intuitive gameplay and motivations. In an historical game it also needs to be considered if it is creating clearly anti-historical gameplay situations.

Yes, there are other facets of the game that would certainly fall under these umbrellas, and yes, this is a rule that has been part of the game for years and is a part of making the game relatively simple. But if we can keep track of the movement remaining on planes coming from 6 different territories to the same battle, we can keep track of which units came from which land territories.

@superbattleshipyamato I respect your difference of opinion. While I do disagree with you, in that i feel this is a problem in the game, I do concur that it is not of the same severity as several other opportunities the game has experienced and continues to experience.